Kitchen work is hard on your body, the hours are terribly long and the money is not great unless you are in the very top tier—you'd have to be nuts or at the very least very naive to start a kitchen career thinking you'll get rich. Having said that, I'm going to point my fingers at two Food Network stars who've never worked in kitchens: Sandra Lee and Rachael Ray. Celebrities, yes; chefs, no. Their shows make me sad for the tastebuds and health of the people that watch them.

Did you get cupcakes, or did you leave the line? If you stayed and you liked them, then it wasn't a waste of time. Who cares what other people think?

Having said that, I'm in the minority that actualls prefers the super sweetness of Magnolia's cupcakes—the sugary icing makes me feel like I'm 8, in pigtails at a friend's birthday party! Nostalgia makes any treat taste even better, really. Sugar Sweet Sunshine's cupcakes are tasty but if I'm going in there (I live five minutes away and go at least once a week), the banana pudding is a full order of magnitude tastier than any cupcake on the planet. And I don't usually like bananas or pudding!

I know you've had balut in Vietnam, and Filipino food doesn't have the sexy reputation extended to its neighbors in Southeast Asia, but you're still missing out by not visiting the Philippines—c'mon now, my people love pork so much there's an entire neighborhood in Manila dedicated to roasting pigs year-round.

Read my post again, please; that's actually Krispy Kreme's view, not mine. My comment about the 20 calories savings was not pulled out of thin air—it's clearly in response to their touting the lesser calories as A Big Deal.

And let's be honest, Krispy Kreme is doing this in response to their losing money because of low carb diets, hoping that people who don't know much about nutrition (most people) will think the whole wheat doughnut is going to be a treat they can swap in that's going to help make things better, and that's wrong. The huge emphasis being placed on low carb, low fat, whole wheat, skim milk, etc is messed up in a diet-crazy, eating-disordered country where people will gladly eat all those things but in hugely oversized portions, when the truth is we'd most of us do just fine eating traditional food in moderations.

people may actually prefer the taste of whole wheat

See, now that's crazy talk right there! But seriously, you totally missed my point: doughnuts are perfectly fine the way they are, it's our eating habits that are messed up.

Or they may prefer having 4 marginally less delicious whole wheat doughnuts a month to their normal 3 traditional doughnuts.

If you want an example of illogical thought, that's a classic example right there, from the US "more is better" school. There's no good reason someone with a healthy attitude towards eating would or should prefer to have four less tasty, only slightly healthier doughnuts to three tastier doughnuts in one day, let alone over a month. Imagine asking your average Parisian to choose between eating three proper butter croissants and four whole wheat croissants!

A doughnut shouldn't have to be better, is my point. It should be okay for a doughnut to be a delicious fatty treat, and people should be able to have a delicious fatty treat every once in a while without feeling any guilt. The health hype is wrapped up in food guilt, and that to me is a large component of what makes eating in the US both unhealthy and fearful. Eating should be pleasurable, not stressful.

Yeah, right? I want to say I'd be too potentially grossed out to eat there if I didn't see the oil or broth dumped in fresh right before, but I love a good hot pot and I suspect if it were in front of me I would just go ahead and eat!

I was 2 or 3 and my mom force-fed me unsalted boiled mashed carrots. The experience was so terrible I basically didn't eat vegetables again (the humble potato being the lone exception) till I was 16. I'm still not very fond of them!

I've never been to New Orleans but from everything I've heard I'd be very happy visiting there even if all I did was stuff my face. I have been to Tokyo a few times and as interesting and amazing as it is, I would still be really happy if on a return trip all I did was eat eat eat! NYC is a great food city and I'm glad to live here.

Alaina and I bought Ajinomoto's pork, chicken and vegetable frozen gyoza after trying it cooked in Mitsuwa, it's fairly tasty and I polished off the bag but I'm not really into having chicken in my gyoza. The brand I like the most is Day-Lee's pork and vegetable gyoza, you can find them in JAS-Mart in New York and other Japanese groceries in the US; their cooking instructions worked best with both their gyoza and Ajinomoto's, for what it's worth. Maybe we should do a frozen gyoza taste test!